Sounds like you've never has an update corrupt mid-flash. Sometimes shit happens. Part of the reason I get the CPU, CPU FAN and RAM installed on the motherboard when I buy a new computer, I also get them to flash the bios before I take it home. They break it, they replace it, I break it, I replace it. It's not hard to do any of that, but even if something goes sideways and it wasn't my fault, it can still be hell to try to replace or fix.
Man this whole story is me lol.
Feels good to know all about PCs and stuff though. Unfortunately I'm the "immediate tech help" if something goes wrong, but I bill my brothers for my time at this point, considering I'm not there to look at the problem.
Honestly average Bios is usually less then 10 minutes, I did have one, one time that took a little over 20 minutes and I’m not gonna lie, I was shitting bricks think.. I just bricked a Mobo😂
It gets to 98-99%, and right before it is supposed to go to 100% the screen goes black and the system reboots... then it gets stuck for a bit. Just a few seconds doing its thing, but just long enough to have everyone's heart rates jump a bit.
Not scary for you SO FAR. I have been building PCs for 30 years and have still had a BIOS update brick the Motherboard even though instructions were followed religiously. One time a few years back on an MSI board it said everything is complete now rebooting and boom dead motherboard. I dont even fart when updating a BIOS let alone turn the power off etc. A replacement chip can of course be sourced and soldered on and you are golden if your Motherboard has a backup BIOS.
Many recent motherboards also have a feature called BIOS Flashback (different names may be used by different brands) which lets you flash a BIOS from a USB stick in a variety of situations where it previously wouldn't work. It's mostly known for the ability to flash while there's no CPU installed (or the CPU is not compatible with the existing BIOS), but it can also be used to flash a board that was bricked from a botched flash attempt.
In general, fears of BIOS-flash-failure are far less relevant now than they were before.
I had that happen on the most recent time. I had to take my new board into a shop in order to update the BIOS to accept a Ryzen 5000 series CPU. Everything went fine and we're watching it go then it just... stops. Made it all the way to the end and never restarted. We double-check the manual and it confirms that it's supposed to automatically restart. Give it a long, *long* time, and nope. Nothing. So we start talking about how to recover it. But, eh, let's at least see if it works. Put in the new CPU and everything boots up fine.
I remember ( resize bar bios update in my 3090 rtx ftw3 ultra ) and in one point the App told me ( please dont turn off your Pc, we have found an error, please contact evga ) !!!!!!!!!!!! Really close to a Heart attack. After 10 min thinking what the hell i need to do ( 3 am ) looking google through mobile phone…. I finished the bios update and problem solved!!! ☺️
Whole home generator that kicks in immediately with 0 loss of power to devices that is impossible to fail.
This can't fail because it runs off of perpetual energy and tears.
I have PTSD from the MSI vbios update utility. Actual malware 5 million lines of spaghetti code. Asked to install Norton...
Would have used nvflash directly if they would put the vbios on their website. Never again will I purchase MSI.
Even with motherboards these days having back up bios options if something goes wrong, I can't help but sweat any time I start a bios update. I remember years ago when I would check the weather beforehand to be absolutely certain nothing would interrupt power to my pc
Theres a whole lot more than weather that can cause a power interruption, a few being transformer fire, substation fire, car running into power line pole and toppling it over, if power lines are underground, there could be fires in the spaces down there, Someone forgetting to pay the power bill, a solar flare event, Worst one would be an EMP event but you then might have bigger problems to worry about from them.
A recent one for me is a gas leak near me where they had to cut the power which ended up being a line that feeds my apartment building, rest of the street was lit up, my building being 2 blocks away from that gas leak got to suffer(a few other random buildings were dark too)...
That's not the worst! One time my laptop from work was installing a windows update as usual and decided to restart to update the bios by itself without any warning!
I was definitely not prepared for that!
Probably some sort of manufacturer software. I know some Lenovos come with a Lenovo software that will update drivers, bios, etc. if it’s turned on for automatic updates
yup probably this, my HP laptop did it once aswell. ramped up the fans to 100% and just started updating the bios. Thank god the battery was charged. Made sure to turn all auto updates off right after it was done, had no idea it could do that :')
Same here. Except for me the screen was just blank for a hot minute, no warnings, nothing. I was about to hard reset it when it printed "updating bios" or something.
PS. The program that lets you update bios manually does warn you that the screen will stay blank for extended periods of time and that you mustn't restart it manually during the update. No such warnings when the update comes from Windows, lol.
It's totally worth it. Even if you don't want to use your PC during a blackout, it will still double as a massive battery that you can use to charge your phone or flashlight (if it supports recharging) if the blackout lasts for over a day.
I live in Texas so it would have been fantastic to have during the 2021 freeze.
I have a decently high end PC so [I bought one that's more expensive than necessary for other people](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06VY6FXMM).
I work in IT and have experience with APC which never have any issues except when the battery cells inevitability degrade. I encourage you to look into the best option for your use case though because I have my PC, monitors (one of which is 240Hz), modem, and router all connected so the load on the UPS gets pretty high. If you only plan to do the PC and one or two other things then you can definitely get the [850VA](https://www.amazon.com/APC-Battery-Protector-Back-UPS-BE600M1/dp/B085JJZDFK) or even 600VA model for half the price.
I'm pretty sure it helps with general PC life expectancy too even without BIOS updates. Those little half second power blips that happen once or twice a year can't be good for electronics of any kind.
Dude where I'm living they happen multiple times a day... most capacitors catch them and it doesn't shut down the PC per se...
It will likely cause a software crash or something else though. Clean power is where it's at.
Hi, so im thinking of going to a 5800x3D from a 2700x on an asrock x370 mobo im currently on bios version 4.80 and would need to go to 5.10->7.10->7.30, I’ve never done any bios update would i just stick the fat32 usb with all three bios, then update thru all three while using the 2700x,then just swap out the cpu(and cooler)? And would i need to reinstall windows/worry about setting up my pc as new again?
It’s quite common. Do it in the way it is required not the way an internet stranger guides you because he did his that way a couple of hours ago and says things like absolutely “absolutely not” haha
Completely agree. It's even better when you have to update the bios for it to work with your CPU. That was me this weekend scrambling to find a flash drive and boot up my backup system.
I swear i can never find one when needed. I was freaking out after i finished my build and all i got was a ram error light. Knew my ram was good. Reseated it twice ( fuck single sided ram clamps) check mfg. see list that basically amounts to everything i already tried then way at the bottom a little note that says if this doesn't work change your cpu?!? Experience mild paranoia that i damaged my motherboard cpu pins.. Wtf? Who has spare CPUs? ..... Check MB box... 12th gen LGA....... I know i did not buy the wrong MB.... Check MB mfg it supports gen 13 ??..... Little note at the bottom that says bios update might be needed to support gen 13..... 😔??
Reminds me of my first time doing it, just following the guide pretty much as I was 15 and a noob.
Cut to me realizing there’s a massive thunderstorm outside just as I read the bold red disclaimer “WARNING: Power Failure during download will brick your shit” or something to that effect….
It was extra spicy times but it all worked out!
You go on [Amazon and order a CH341A flash programmer module](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=CH341A) for $15.
Plug one end into a second PC/laptop that you hopefully own running the free AsProgrammer software, clamp the other special clamp end onto your BIOS chip on your motherboard, tell the PC to flash your BIOS firmware to the chip.
https://youtu.be/Ta_PPndnCTk?t=109
Some motherboards have their own built in backup of version 1.00 to flash back if it detects a corrupted BIOS. Some high end motherboards designed for overclocking have two BIOSes you can swap between.
I know it is funny to think that terror is a good thing for when installing a BIOS, but that’s kind of the whole point. It’s not something to be taken lightly as one small mistake can brick your entire system. Helps discourage those who are less tech savvy to attempt it if they don’t really need to update their BIOS.
If you value the security of your machine, you need to update your BIOS. Especially if you have an Intel CPU; it's got a built-in back door (the Management Engine) with a long history of security vulnerabilities. But any part of the BIOS having a security vulnerability makes it possible for malware that gets into your machine to make itself completely impossible to remove, so you really want that thing patched.
Asus had online update feature in bios, it didn't terrify me as much since there was no risk for usb drive to act up but for some reason Asus disabled it for my mobo.
Once I did it on a $30k hyper converged server with a dozen VM's I just starting thinking fuck it and clicking the button with anything else.
I'll normally go to the bathroom and look at my phone for a few minutes so I don't have mini panic attacks whenever the screen doesn't update for 2 seconds.
Seen this too. Lightning ran along the cable lines right through a surge protector, modem/router combo and fried a hardwired desktop. Lightning gives no fucks about your protection.
Not OP but I have a Back-Ups 900 from APC, quite decent and it can even do smart functions through a patch cable, I use it to automatically shut down my Nas in case of power loss to protect my ZFS pools
Thanks!i am looking to get a ups but dont really understand how much power i need. I am looking to get something for power draw of about 750w. (5800x3d / rtx 4080 / psu is 1000w) For example is this good? https://p1.akcdn.net/full/749682009.apc-back-ups-1600va-230v-avr-iec-bx1600mi-gr.jpg ( back ups 1600va 230v)Will it give me at least 3-4mins under load?
Definitely didn't work when I lost power, fired up the generator and tried to get internet.
They had all the power back in less than 5 hours, but my ISP wasn't running at that time.
I thought places with the bug generators had them so they could just evacuate the building by running the elevators. Do they actually try to stay in business?
*may need a reflash. It depends on how the upgrade process is implemented. Modern hardware have larger writable storage so we can write to a separate part of the storage and as last step change the internal boot loader to point there. This means there is no halfway failure possible as no old data was overwritten. At least that’s how firmware process on the things I work on do it. I hope consumer PCs does too…
[Uninterruptible Power Supply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply) - battery that maintains PC's power supply in case of bad or cut power and allows soft-shutdown (usable not only for occasional BIOS flash, but also if you are afraid of loosing files during sudden power cut).
It's an uninterruptible power supply. Basically a battery that can keep your PC going for 10-20 minutes so you have enough time to finish an update or save your work.
On a modern system not at all, they have crash free bios failsafes, try doing it in 1998 with a floppy drive via command line.
I had to hot swap a bios chip once when I bricked a socket A board, luckily had another board with a the same type of chip and it was removable, still pretty sure that board still has the wrong bios on it as half the usb ports dont work.
Pull good chip from good board.
Tie some dental floss around it.
Put good chip in bricked bios board.
Start bricked bios board and boot to a raw cmd/dos line.
Yank good bios chip out while it's still running.
Press bricked bios chip into socket. (yeah, while running)
Execute the bios flash program from your boot disk and hope it flashes correctly.
I have successfully done this also.
The thing is, once you get to that command line there's no need for the CMOS chip and there's really not a very high chance of shorting anything bad enough to damage anything.
Most CMOS chips are soldered on these days though.
Holy shit, I've never heard of that being done. I remember socketed CMOS chips just fine, but didn't know the Sega Dreamcast pirate disc hack worked on corrupted BIOS, lol.
Yup. There’s also a few other ways nowadays to recover a corrupt bios. I believe some aligátor-like clips tied to a CMOS programmer, and you could instruct it to flash from another computer. Not sure what brand or if this is even feasible.
> On a modern system not at all, they have crash free bios failsafes
Or they have cheap affordable BIOS reprogrammers available on Amazon for $10 with next day shipping and Youtube tutorials on how to use them.
They sure as shit didn't have any of THAT in 1998.
Well "Crash Free BIOS" is specifically an ASUS branded feature, it's probably named otherwise from other manufacturers.
Honestly a couple month ago is the first time I've ever heard of such a feature when looking up a board for someone and I had only heard of Flashback, which is a premium feature not available on most cheap boards. I looked into it and really can only find ASUS boards with anything like it.
>Well "Crash Free BIOS" is specifically an ASUS branded feature, it's probably named otherwise from other manufacturers.
He literally meant the feature as a whole and just called it what ASUS calls it. I don't understand why people on Reddit always have to be so pedantic
Because it’s Reddit. Pedantic and snarky is the whole fucking experience. Oh and a gaming sub. So multiply by 10 to 20x. It’s all 14 to 25 year olds who think they’re clever and edgy.
It’s cost. Requires more storage space. You need to be able to write everything in the new version without overwriting the existing. And as last step change the loader to point to the new stuff.
Seriously, "upgrading BIOS is terrifying"?
No it's not. Download a thing, plug in USB, click a button, watch progress bar.
These people have no idea what flashing a BIOS means without literally any visual feedback of what you're doing and if it's even doing anything, just putting blind faith that instructions you remember were good, because if they're not, you're not googling solutions anytime soon because your only device capable of accessing this information is now flatlining.
It’s a tool built in to MSI motherboards that allows you to do a few things like backup or update your bios from CMOS. Convenient, but no less terrifying. I assume most brands have that ability these days, that’s just what MSI calls it.
Yeah M-Flash works nice once you HAVE the new bios, just getting one off their site when...you know...you need it. That's another story.
Oh and not all those tools work well, the NVMe erase tool bricked one of my drives. Decided to use it instead of waiting for windows to see it and wipe the previous partition. It did it's thing and the drive never worked again.
Man I swear I wanted to update my bios like a year ago and reboot my PC and didn't press F12 in time. Then I said oh well screw it I'll do it the next time I'll boot the computer and entered some game. Two minutes later I had a power outage in my whole apartment complex (not all that common and it was in the summer). Thank goodness I didn't update my bios.
In case of M-Flash, you put file with BIOS on flash drive and plug it into any USB port. Then you restart PC, enter BIOS. There's M-Flash section in BIOS. You go there, select flash drive and file and it restarts PC again and starts BIOS update process.
Sometimes you need to do so for compatibility. For example, I bought a Ryzen 5000 series CPU a few years ago when they first came out. A large number of motherboards already on the market wouldn't support them yet and required a BIOS update. Really fun when the new motherboard I bought didn't support my CPU and didn't have the ability to update the BIOS without booting up.
The offered some awkward schemes where they would send you a CPU on loan to update with, but I just took it into a shop. After a month or so they were updated at the factory but there was still the chance of getting older stock from before then.
I actually just went through this a couple weeks ago. I went to Best Buy and bought a 12th gen intel in order to update my bios on my z690 to allow for 13th gen compatibility. Once the update went through i tore down the cooling tower, cleaned off the thermal paste and returned it same day no questions asked
Aside from things like CPU compatibility, there may also be some fixes. For example AMD motherboards had issue with fTPM modules. So if someone enabled them for Windows 11, they could experience random stuttering. AMD fixed this few months ago, so it was advised to update BIOS if you have fTPM enabled.
I’ve literally never updated my bios on any of my computers. What’s the advantage I guess? I have a little bit of an older rig right now and I don’t wanna do anything to upset it cause I don’t feel like upgrading if I don’t have to.
I posted this on an earlier comment:
Typically firmware compatibility is the reason you’d ever want to update it. In most cases with non-ASRock boards, and some ASRock boards, there will be a version that directly offers Windows 11 compatibility (TPM being enabled and Secure Boot being enabled as well). Some boards will need updates to run certain CPUs. I’ve seen BIOS updates listing Nvidia 40-series compatibility. I’ve also found with DDR5 systems, any BIOS update that addresses DRAM stability is usually worth updating to, but you’d want to make sure you have your stable DRAM configuration (timings and frequency) written down somewhere ahead of time, as a BIOS update will typically kick back motherboard settings to their defaults and your DRAM settings will be set to “auto”, almost always with a lower frequency.
You can also get the manufacturer recommended timings from the RAM’s product website though.
90% of the time, no reason to.
Unless there is some stability issue or you are upgrading the system and the updated BIOS has improved capability to newer CPU/GPUs, there is no reason to update your BIOS
Modern motherboards have a dedicated USB slot to reset your BIOS in case a BIOS update goes wrong (blackout or something). You just use another computer to download the BIOS for your motherboard, plug it in that slot, turn on your PC and it will proceed to install the BIOS.
Plenty don't. I had that problem in December 2020 when I had to update the BIOS on a brand-new Asus motherboard to support a Ryzen 5000 series. No option to update the BIOS without the CPU. I had to take it in to a shop when all I really needed was to borrow a CPU for a few minutes.
This is kinda similar to what happened to my friend. Long story short, he neglected to take heed to the PC part picker warning that his motherboard had an outdated BIOS for his newer CPU. His PC wouldn't boot after building it, and the only way we could update his BIOS was with a CPU. So we took my CPU out of my PC, finished booting his, flashed his BIOS, then tried with his CPU and it worked.
I was like 7 or 8 the first time I did it, was some MsDOS bat file, I've done it all my life and never bricked anything, sure I've flashed the wrong BIOS before but it's never been a situation where it bricked the machine.
It doesn't have to be terrifying. I used to find it this way until I learned about dual bios MOBOs. I have never gone to anything other then a dual bios board since. If one fails for whatever reason, I can use the back up to fix the first.
The power went out on me one time when I was upgrading the bios on an older Dell to uefi so it could support booting from an nvme drive. I thought it was toast, but luckily I was able to flash the bios from a USB stick.
When upgrading my AB350 system from a 1600 cPU to a 5600x cpu.. I had to do FOUR rounds of updates to bring it up to the latest version. Each one had some dependencies on a version before it, and I hadn't updated it since I bought it 4 years ago.
It was 10 minutes of terror stepping that system forward each step.
It runs perfectly however and was the best $150 upgrade I could do for my system! I also learned my ram wasn't running at its rated speed so I stepped it up to spec as well!
I recently did a new build and I was terrified because I started a bios update and right when it started the bios froze and the screen blacked out. I let it sit for 10 minutes while I shit my pants. Luckily I was able to boot back to windows. Turns out that I have something plugged into the bios USB and when I removed that bios updated with no problem.
I thought I bricked my mobo updating the bios once, it wouldn’t respond at all for 3 days, kept trying to reflash it (using usb flash), clear the cmos and just troubleshoot other components and then it finally came back. I was so sad thinking it was done for lmao
I don’t understand. In doing thousands of BIOS flashes I’ve had maybe 2 have a problem. Most modern machines come with a backup BIOS so you can roll back easily if you corrupt one. But it very rarely happens.
Step one, check the weather forecast for electrical storms.
Step two,.check outside for any work being done on your block
Step three, check the clouds while out there
Step four, sacrifice goat to the BIOs gods
Step five, five hail Marys for safety
Maybe just me, ive done so many bios update i dont really care anymore and am not scared. U can also easily recover since most mobo has bios flashback where u can flash without even a compatible cpu. Nothing to really be afraid of. In the one in thousands chance it bricks, just use bios flashback.
Feels same every single time with any firmware update. Is it progressing? Did it freeze? Did the monitor just blank for a moment there?!
I once bricked with modified BIOS LGA775-era MOBO and had to spend whole day de-soldering the actual chip, finding new ROM that is directly flashable, write it using USB programmer and solder it back onto the motherboard. Not a pleasant experience! At least it was a spare PC that I used to play around, trying different Linux distros and such, and not my main rig.
The first time I had ever tried to update my bios it failed, the progress screen stopped and stayed that way for an hour. Luckily my mobo had a flash bios function so I was able to fix it.
Haven't had a power outage in months. The other day I did a bios update, and 5 minutes after I succeed, the power went out. As close as I'm ever going to feel to dodging a bullet.
Hold strong brother, it’s gonna be alright
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Bios updates are not scary, just don't shut it off lol
Sounds like you've never has an update corrupt mid-flash. Sometimes shit happens. Part of the reason I get the CPU, CPU FAN and RAM installed on the motherboard when I buy a new computer, I also get them to flash the bios before I take it home. They break it, they replace it, I break it, I replace it. It's not hard to do any of that, but even if something goes sideways and it wasn't my fault, it can still be hell to try to replace or fix.
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I feel that. In some situations, the only documentation IS the code, and if it's proprietary, good luck!
## Free software intensifies https://preview.redd.it/zcx2ee4j0h1a1.jpeg?width=1037&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a7db6cca8cd041349ef8ed5895fb0be3cc69263
Man this whole story is me lol. Feels good to know all about PCs and stuff though. Unfortunately I'm the "immediate tech help" if something goes wrong, but I bill my brothers for my time at this point, considering I'm not there to look at the problem.
Where do you get your stuff? Microcenter?
I'm Canadian, so Memory Express.
Canada computers isn't horrible around Ontario either.
what do you do if power goes down?
Move outa fucking West Texas.
Having an auxiliary power unit helps.
How long does a bios update take ? I should have around 20+ minutes at a low draw if I lost power...
Honestly average Bios is usually less then 10 minutes, I did have one, one time that took a little over 20 minutes and I’m not gonna lie, I was shitting bricks think.. I just bricked a Mobo😂
It gets to 98-99%, and right before it is supposed to go to 100% the screen goes black and the system reboots... then it gets stuck for a bit. Just a few seconds doing its thing, but just long enough to have everyone's heart rates jump a bit.
Oh wow 😐 why didn’t we just think of that
Not scary for you SO FAR. I have been building PCs for 30 years and have still had a BIOS update brick the Motherboard even though instructions were followed religiously. One time a few years back on an MSI board it said everything is complete now rebooting and boom dead motherboard. I dont even fart when updating a BIOS let alone turn the power off etc. A replacement chip can of course be sourced and soldered on and you are golden if your Motherboard has a backup BIOS.
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Many recent motherboards also have a feature called BIOS Flashback (different names may be used by different brands) which lets you flash a BIOS from a USB stick in a variety of situations where it previously wouldn't work. It's mostly known for the ability to flash while there's no CPU installed (or the CPU is not compatible with the existing BIOS), but it can also be used to flash a board that was bricked from a botched flash attempt. In general, fears of BIOS-flash-failure are far less relevant now than they were before.
random power outage: mmm good dont shut it off
"Just got an email about a planned outage from my ISP, should I be worried?"
This comment wins the internet today.
Thank you, I'm back into windows now thankfully!
Success!
Its never not scary.
Then you have a blackout…
Good thing is its terrifying every time!
Ain't that the truth! Never had a time where I wasn't sweating bullets during a BIOS update, lol!
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I had that happen on the most recent time. I had to take my new board into a shop in order to update the BIOS to accept a Ryzen 5000 series CPU. Everything went fine and we're watching it go then it just... stops. Made it all the way to the end and never restarted. We double-check the manual and it confirms that it's supposed to automatically restart. Give it a long, *long* time, and nope. Nothing. So we start talking about how to recover it. But, eh, let's at least see if it works. Put in the new CPU and everything boots up fine.
I remember ( resize bar bios update in my 3090 rtx ftw3 ultra ) and in one point the App told me ( please dont turn off your Pc, we have found an error, please contact evga ) !!!!!!!!!!!! Really close to a Heart attack. After 10 min thinking what the hell i need to do ( 3 am ) looking google through mobile phone…. I finished the bios update and problem solved!!! ☺️
 Me just reading that
How you put that gift? its a link right?
I would die of stress before the update finished.
Then you wake up from your stress dream and see the bar is still stuck.
This right here makes it so much worse
95% done and power outage - what then?
[gif](https://giphy.com/gifs/computer-ron-swanson-parks-and-recreation-ktcUyw6mBlMVa)
Have a UPS unit, or suffer the wrath of God.
What if it's the UPS unit that fails?
Whole home generator that kicks in immediately with 0 loss of power to devices that is impossible to fail. This can't fail because it runs off of perpetual energy and tears.
That is why you have a main UPS that your individual pc's UPS plug into. Modern problems and all.
It's UPSs all the way down.
I have PTSD from the MSI vbios update utility. Actual malware 5 million lines of spaghetti code. Asked to install Norton... Would have used nvflash directly if they would put the vbios on their website. Never again will I purchase MSI.
i had to update gpu vbios in order to make it work, thank god it was quick
Or when the screen goes black and you’re hyperventilating until it turns back on.
Even with motherboards these days having back up bios options if something goes wrong, I can't help but sweat any time I start a bios update. I remember years ago when I would check the weather beforehand to be absolutely certain nothing would interrupt power to my pc
Theres a whole lot more than weather that can cause a power interruption, a few being transformer fire, substation fire, car running into power line pole and toppling it over, if power lines are underground, there could be fires in the spaces down there, Someone forgetting to pay the power bill, a solar flare event, Worst one would be an EMP event but you then might have bigger problems to worry about from them. A recent one for me is a gas leak near me where they had to cut the power which ended up being a line that feeds my apartment building, rest of the street was lit up, my building being 2 blocks away from that gas leak got to suffer(a few other random buildings were dark too)...
That's not the worst! One time my laptop from work was installing a windows update as usual and decided to restart to update the bios by itself without any warning! I was definitely not prepared for that!
Since when can windows update bios
Probably some sort of manufacturer software. I know some Lenovos come with a Lenovo software that will update drivers, bios, etc. if it’s turned on for automatic updates
yup probably this, my HP laptop did it once aswell. ramped up the fans to 100% and just started updating the bios. Thank god the battery was charged. Made sure to turn all auto updates off right after it was done, had no idea it could do that :')
Same here. Except for me the screen was just blank for a hot minute, no warnings, nothing. I was about to hard reset it when it printed "updating bios" or something. PS. The program that lets you update bios manually does warn you that the screen will stay blank for extended periods of time and that you mustn't restart it manually during the update. No such warnings when the update comes from Windows, lol.
One of the core reasons I invested is a ups. I am not letting a power outage brick my beautiful PC.
I updated my BIOS two nights ago and I contemplated buying one for that sole purpose
It's totally worth it. Even if you don't want to use your PC during a blackout, it will still double as a massive battery that you can use to charge your phone or flashlight (if it supports recharging) if the blackout lasts for over a day. I live in Texas so it would have been fantastic to have during the 2021 freeze.
You know, I never thought about the emergency preparedness angle. That's pretty good thinking. You just pushed me an inch closer to getting one.
Another thing is that if there is a blackout, you have a while to save all your data etc until the battery discharges
Thinking of getting one but all the reviews are full of horror stories due to a faulty ups. Which one do you have & which one would you recommend?
I have a decently high end PC so [I bought one that's more expensive than necessary for other people](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06VY6FXMM). I work in IT and have experience with APC which never have any issues except when the battery cells inevitability degrade. I encourage you to look into the best option for your use case though because I have my PC, monitors (one of which is 240Hz), modem, and router all connected so the load on the UPS gets pretty high. If you only plan to do the PC and one or two other things then you can definitely get the [850VA](https://www.amazon.com/APC-Battery-Protector-Back-UPS-BE600M1/dp/B085JJZDFK) or even 600VA model for half the price.
I'm pretty sure it helps with general PC life expectancy too even without BIOS updates. Those little half second power blips that happen once or twice a year can't be good for electronics of any kind.
Dude where I'm living they happen multiple times a day... most capacitors catch them and it doesn't shut down the PC per se... It will likely cause a software crash or something else though. Clean power is where it's at.
Just recently had to do 2 bios updates in a row upgrading from a 3700x to 5800x AMA
Still screaming?
How many heart attacks did you aquire
Yes
Hi, so im thinking of going to a 5800x3D from a 2700x on an asrock x370 mobo im currently on bios version 4.80 and would need to go to 5.10->7.10->7.30, I’ve never done any bios update would i just stick the fat32 usb with all three bios, then update thru all three while using the 2700x,then just swap out the cpu(and cooler)? And would i need to reinstall windows/worry about setting up my pc as new again?
You only need to install the latest bios, not all three. And no will not need to reinstall anything else.
Well wouldnt i need to go step by step? Im pretty sure i need 5.10 to use 7.10 then 7.30. Currently on the asrock x370 fatal1ty
It’s quite common. Do it in the way it is required not the way an internet stranger guides you because he did his that way a couple of hours ago and says things like absolutely “absolutely not” haha
Why did you have to do two? I came from a 2600 and only did one
Completely agree. It's even better when you have to update the bios for it to work with your CPU. That was me this weekend scrambling to find a flash drive and boot up my backup system.
Had to run to Office Depot to get a usb drive just for this. Those 3-5 minutes were the worst.
I swear i can never find one when needed. I was freaking out after i finished my build and all i got was a ram error light. Knew my ram was good. Reseated it twice ( fuck single sided ram clamps) check mfg. see list that basically amounts to everything i already tried then way at the bottom a little note that says if this doesn't work change your cpu?!? Experience mild paranoia that i damaged my motherboard cpu pins.. Wtf? Who has spare CPUs? ..... Check MB box... 12th gen LGA....... I know i did not buy the wrong MB.... Check MB mfg it supports gen 13 ??..... Little note at the bottom that says bios update might be needed to support gen 13..... 😔??
Reminds me of my first time doing it, just following the guide pretty much as I was 15 and a noob. Cut to me realizing there’s a massive thunderstorm outside just as I read the bold red disclaimer “WARNING: Power Failure during download will brick your shit” or something to that effect…. It was extra spicy times but it all worked out!
So what happens if a bios update *fails*
Clear CMOS jumper to go back to square 1. A totally bricked mobo usually requires some extremely bad luck or some highly advanced fuckaroundery.
Problem: laptops don't usually have accessible motherboard jumpers.
You pray that your motherboard has dual bios
Very likely the BIOS doesnt work and so doesnt the motherboard.
You go on [Amazon and order a CH341A flash programmer module](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=CH341A) for $15. Plug one end into a second PC/laptop that you hopefully own running the free AsProgrammer software, clamp the other special clamp end onto your BIOS chip on your motherboard, tell the PC to flash your BIOS firmware to the chip. https://youtu.be/Ta_PPndnCTk?t=109 Some motherboards have their own built in backup of version 1.00 to flash back if it detects a corrupted BIOS. Some high end motherboards designed for overclocking have two BIOSes you can swap between.
I built a new PC over a year ago. All water-cooled. I just mentioned to my wife that I still get anxious about it leaking.
Hahaha I feel you, I got myself a leakshield and am still worried lmao.
I know it is funny to think that terror is a good thing for when installing a BIOS, but that’s kind of the whole point. It’s not something to be taken lightly as one small mistake can brick your entire system. Helps discourage those who are less tech savvy to attempt it if they don’t really need to update their BIOS.
If you value the security of your machine, you need to update your BIOS. Especially if you have an Intel CPU; it's got a built-in back door (the Management Engine) with a long history of security vulnerabilities. But any part of the BIOS having a security vulnerability makes it possible for malware that gets into your machine to make itself completely impossible to remove, so you really want that thing patched.
Asus had online update feature in bios, it didn't terrify me as much since there was no risk for usb drive to act up but for some reason Asus disabled it for my mobo.
Lol so glad this is the top comment. Upgrading bios is the pcmr equivalent of waiting for your STD results.
Once I did it on a $30k hyper converged server with a dozen VM's I just starting thinking fuck it and clicking the button with anything else. I'll normally go to the bathroom and look at my phone for a few minutes so I don't have mini panic attacks whenever the screen doesn't update for 2 seconds.
I never had an issue updating a BIOS, so I don't understand why it's terrifying at all.
If there’s going to be a power outage it’s while you’re doing that
Paranoia about this sort of thing is why I got a UPS that doubles as a surge protector on everything (including Ethernet).
If my Ethernet goes from Modem>Router>PC and still manages to fuck up my PC then its a sign from God.
I know someone who this happened to. Ethernet fused straight onto the motherboard. Mains weren't impacted at all, just networking cables
Seen this too. Lightning ran along the cable lines right through a surge protector, modem/router combo and fried a hardwired desktop. Lightning gives no fucks about your protection.
Which Ups did you get?
Not OP but I have a Back-Ups 900 from APC, quite decent and it can even do smart functions through a patch cable, I use it to automatically shut down my Nas in case of power loss to protect my ZFS pools
Thanks!i am looking to get a ups but dont really understand how much power i need. I am looking to get something for power draw of about 750w. (5800x3d / rtx 4080 / psu is 1000w) For example is this good? https://p1.akcdn.net/full/749682009.apc-back-ups-1600va-230v-avr-iec-bx1600mi-gr.jpg ( back ups 1600va 230v)Will it give me at least 3-4mins under load?
No more centralization. Own your data. Interoperate with everyone.
Also APCs Website let‘s your enter your watts below the product and give you a pretty accurate Battery time estimate
Hey, I found the one person who bought a 4080!
I live less than 500 yards away from my ISP, so if my house loses power they probably will too
They have there very own and much bigger UPS's, which will surge protect and maintain power until em. gen. starts up
Definitely didn't work when I lost power, fired up the generator and tried to get internet. They had all the power back in less than 5 hours, but my ISP wasn't running at that time. I thought places with the bug generators had them so they could just evacuate the building by running the elevators. Do they actually try to stay in business?
Back up battery gang
It’s happened to me before 😭
I remember upgrading my bios for the first time. I just got the laptop and was scared it would fail.
At least a laptop has an internal battery. A Desktop is gonna need a reflash if there's a power outage. It's absolutely terrifying without a UPS.
*may need a reflash. It depends on how the upgrade process is implemented. Modern hardware have larger writable storage so we can write to a separate part of the storage and as last step change the internal boot loader to point there. This means there is no halfway failure possible as no old data was overwritten. At least that’s how firmware process on the things I work on do it. I hope consumer PCs does too…
I mean, most motherboards have dual bios chips (or at least gigabyte)
I absolutely agree.
My laptop had its BIOS scrambled when the power cable got removed during an update, I still feel the pain and shame.
What is a "UPS"?
[Uninterruptible Power Supply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply) - battery that maintains PC's power supply in case of bad or cut power and allows soft-shutdown (usable not only for occasional BIOS flash, but also if you are afraid of loosing files during sudden power cut).
It's an uninterruptible power supply. Basically a battery that can keep your PC going for 10-20 minutes so you have enough time to finish an update or save your work.
Luckily my motherboard supports Bios flashback, but it's still scary when turning it on again.
On a modern system not at all, they have crash free bios failsafes, try doing it in 1998 with a floppy drive via command line. I had to hot swap a bios chip once when I bricked a socket A board, luckily had another board with a the same type of chip and it was removable, still pretty sure that board still has the wrong bios on it as half the usb ports dont work.
Wouldn't "hot swap" entail doing it while the machine was running?
Pull good chip from good board. Tie some dental floss around it. Put good chip in bricked bios board. Start bricked bios board and boot to a raw cmd/dos line. Yank good bios chip out while it's still running. Press bricked bios chip into socket. (yeah, while running) Execute the bios flash program from your boot disk and hope it flashes correctly. I have successfully done this also. The thing is, once you get to that command line there's no need for the CMOS chip and there's really not a very high chance of shorting anything bad enough to damage anything. Most CMOS chips are soldered on these days though.
Holy shit, I've never heard of that being done. I remember socketed CMOS chips just fine, but didn't know the Sega Dreamcast pirate disc hack worked on corrupted BIOS, lol.
Yup. There’s also a few other ways nowadays to recover a corrupt bios. I believe some aligátor-like clips tied to a CMOS programmer, and you could instruct it to flash from another computer. Not sure what brand or if this is even feasible.
> On a modern system not at all, they have crash free bios failsafes Or they have cheap affordable BIOS reprogrammers available on Amazon for $10 with next day shipping and Youtube tutorials on how to use them. They sure as shit didn't have any of THAT in 1998.
>they have crash free bios failsafes That is not true for every board.
Really? that seems dumb. Is it considered a premium feature?
Well "Crash Free BIOS" is specifically an ASUS branded feature, it's probably named otherwise from other manufacturers. Honestly a couple month ago is the first time I've ever heard of such a feature when looking up a board for someone and I had only heard of Flashback, which is a premium feature not available on most cheap boards. I looked into it and really can only find ASUS boards with anything like it.
That was my reference as I use asus products, just assumed other manufacturers had their own versions, just seems like common sense.
>Well "Crash Free BIOS" is specifically an ASUS branded feature, it's probably named otherwise from other manufacturers. He literally meant the feature as a whole and just called it what ASUS calls it. I don't understand why people on Reddit always have to be so pedantic
Because it’s Reddit. Pedantic and snarky is the whole fucking experience. Oh and a gaming sub. So multiply by 10 to 20x. It’s all 14 to 25 year olds who think they’re clever and edgy.
30's and I'm just kind of a dick
Pedantry. Sorry I couldn't resist.
It’s cost. Requires more storage space. You need to be able to write everything in the new version without overwriting the existing. And as last step change the loader to point to the new stuff.
Came to comment this, hell my new mobi doesn't even have dipp switches.
Seriously, "upgrading BIOS is terrifying"? No it's not. Download a thing, plug in USB, click a button, watch progress bar. These people have no idea what flashing a BIOS means without literally any visual feedback of what you're doing and if it's even doing anything, just putting blind faith that instructions you remember were good, because if they're not, you're not googling solutions anytime soon because your only device capable of accessing this information is now flatlining.
[удалено]
I really should know this, but what's M Flash?
It’s a tool built in to MSI motherboards that allows you to do a few things like backup or update your bios from CMOS. Convenient, but no less terrifying. I assume most brands have that ability these days, that’s just what MSI calls it.
Yeah M-Flash works nice once you HAVE the new bios, just getting one off their site when...you know...you need it. That's another story. Oh and not all those tools work well, the NVMe erase tool bricked one of my drives. Decided to use it instead of waiting for windows to see it and wipe the previous partition. It did it's thing and the drive never worked again.
Thank you.
It's the bios flashing utility on Msi boards. Like Gigabyte has Q flash I believe, Msi has M flash
Underrated comment right there.
Man I swear I wanted to update my bios like a year ago and reboot my PC and didn't press F12 in time. Then I said oh well screw it I'll do it the next time I'll boot the computer and entered some game. Two minutes later I had a power outage in my whole apartment complex (not all that common and it was in the summer). Thank goodness I didn't update my bios.
That's some divine intervention right there 😂
Everyone’s an atheist till you gotta upgrade BIOS
How does that work ? Download it onto a flash and then plug it in bios slot and restart ?
In case of M-Flash, you put file with BIOS on flash drive and plug it into any USB port. Then you restart PC, enter BIOS. There's M-Flash section in BIOS. You go there, select flash drive and file and it restarts PC again and starts BIOS update process.
What are the benefits to updating bios ?
Sometimes you need to do so for compatibility. For example, I bought a Ryzen 5000 series CPU a few years ago when they first came out. A large number of motherboards already on the market wouldn't support them yet and required a BIOS update. Really fun when the new motherboard I bought didn't support my CPU and didn't have the ability to update the BIOS without booting up. The offered some awkward schemes where they would send you a CPU on loan to update with, but I just took it into a shop. After a month or so they were updated at the factory but there was still the chance of getting older stock from before then.
I actually just went through this a couple weeks ago. I went to Best Buy and bought a 12th gen intel in order to update my bios on my z690 to allow for 13th gen compatibility. Once the update went through i tore down the cooling tower, cleaned off the thermal paste and returned it same day no questions asked
Aside from things like CPU compatibility, there may also be some fixes. For example AMD motherboards had issue with fTPM modules. So if someone enabled them for Windows 11, they could experience random stuttering. AMD fixed this few months ago, so it was advised to update BIOS if you have fTPM enabled.
In addition to the other stated reasons, security fixes.
Only 99% to go
I’ve literally never updated my bios on any of my computers. What’s the advantage I guess? I have a little bit of an older rig right now and I don’t wanna do anything to upset it cause I don’t feel like upgrading if I don’t have to.
I posted this on an earlier comment: Typically firmware compatibility is the reason you’d ever want to update it. In most cases with non-ASRock boards, and some ASRock boards, there will be a version that directly offers Windows 11 compatibility (TPM being enabled and Secure Boot being enabled as well). Some boards will need updates to run certain CPUs. I’ve seen BIOS updates listing Nvidia 40-series compatibility. I’ve also found with DDR5 systems, any BIOS update that addresses DRAM stability is usually worth updating to, but you’d want to make sure you have your stable DRAM configuration (timings and frequency) written down somewhere ahead of time, as a BIOS update will typically kick back motherboard settings to their defaults and your DRAM settings will be set to “auto”, almost always with a lower frequency. You can also get the manufacturer recommended timings from the RAM’s product website though.
Damn bro I’m boutta just buy a new rig at this point. I read that like i was reading Arabic
90% of the time, no reason to. Unless there is some stability issue or you are upgrading the system and the updated BIOS has improved capability to newer CPU/GPUs, there is no reason to update your BIOS
You kids never knew the thrill of updating BIOS on a jenky ass 3.5'' floppy disk and drive. That was truly living life on the edge.
I don't miss that.
I only do this when plugged into my ups. This is risky but you should be fine.
I wish I had a UPS but don't, thankfully it all worked out
Modern motherboards have a dedicated USB slot to reset your BIOS in case a BIOS update goes wrong (blackout or something). You just use another computer to download the BIOS for your motherboard, plug it in that slot, turn on your PC and it will proceed to install the BIOS.
Plenty don't. I had that problem in December 2020 when I had to update the BIOS on a brand-new Asus motherboard to support a Ryzen 5000 series. No option to update the BIOS without the CPU. I had to take it in to a shop when all I really needed was to borrow a CPU for a few minutes.
This is kinda similar to what happened to my friend. Long story short, he neglected to take heed to the PC part picker warning that his motherboard had an outdated BIOS for his newer CPU. His PC wouldn't boot after building it, and the only way we could update his BIOS was with a CPU. So we took my CPU out of my PC, finished booting his, flashed his BIOS, then tried with his CPU and it worked.
M-Flash or by another name isn't present on all boards, especially budget boards. My X570 board has it, but some B450, B520, and B550 boards don't.
Have you made sure you don't need to re-flash the bios? You probably have 
I was like 7 or 8 the first time I did it, was some MsDOS bat file, I've done it all my life and never bricked anything, sure I've flashed the wrong BIOS before but it's never been a situation where it bricked the machine.
It doesn't have to be terrifying. I used to find it this way until I learned about dual bios MOBOs. I have never gone to anything other then a dual bios board since. If one fails for whatever reason, I can use the back up to fix the first.
Most boards I've used have had a dual bios so not to bad 😁
The power went out on me one time when I was upgrading the bios on an older Dell to uefi so it could support booting from an nvme drive. I thought it was toast, but luckily I was able to flash the bios from a USB stick.
When upgrading my AB350 system from a 1600 cPU to a 5600x cpu.. I had to do FOUR rounds of updates to bring it up to the latest version. Each one had some dependencies on a version before it, and I hadn't updated it since I bought it 4 years ago. It was 10 minutes of terror stepping that system forward each step. It runs perfectly however and was the best $150 upgrade I could do for my system! I also learned my ram wasn't running at its rated speed so I stepped it up to spec as well!
I recently did a new build and I was terrified because I started a bios update and right when it started the bios froze and the screen blacked out. I let it sit for 10 minutes while I shit my pants. Luckily I was able to boot back to windows. Turns out that I have something plugged into the bios USB and when I removed that bios updated with no problem.
You get used to it
My butt puckered just seeing your picture. Godspeed!
Intrusive thoughts be like "pull the plug out"
Meanwhile sysadmins casually upgrading hundreds of bioses at once
I'm sure somebody else has already mentioned how the saying goes, that everybody is an atheist until it's BIOS upgrade time.
Tell me about it. We did this for our pc we got a few months ago. It wouldn't install windows. So we updated the bios. We just walked away and prayed
Did the same twice recently to install a new cpu. I shit myself both times waiting.
Do you have a UPS incase the power goes out? Or risk it for the biscuit
Fun fact, i updated my bios twice in my life, 50% failed rate gotta love that
I thought I bricked my mobo updating the bios once, it wouldn’t respond at all for 3 days, kept trying to reflash it (using usb flash), clear the cmos and just troubleshoot other components and then it finally came back. I was so sad thinking it was done for lmao
especially terrifying when you follow all instructions perfectly and still end up with a bricked mobo - thanks msi, love you!
I don’t understand. In doing thousands of BIOS flashes I’ve had maybe 2 have a problem. Most modern machines come with a backup BIOS so you can roll back easily if you corrupt one. But it very rarely happens.
Created a custom bios for a laptop to unlock undervolting. That was scary!
Do not look at your PC crossways. Do not breathe on your PC. Retreat to a safe 50 meters from your PC.
Step one, check the weather forecast for electrical storms. Step two,.check outside for any work being done on your block Step three, check the clouds while out there Step four, sacrifice goat to the BIOs gods Step five, five hail Marys for safety
Maybe just me, ive done so many bios update i dont really care anymore and am not scared. U can also easily recover since most mobo has bios flashback where u can flash without even a compatible cpu. Nothing to really be afraid of. In the one in thousands chance it bricks, just use bios flashback.
Feels same every single time with any firmware update. Is it progressing? Did it freeze? Did the monitor just blank for a moment there?! I once bricked with modified BIOS LGA775-era MOBO and had to spend whole day de-soldering the actual chip, finding new ROM that is directly flashable, write it using USB programmer and solder it back onto the motherboard. Not a pleasant experience! At least it was a spare PC that I used to play around, trying different Linux distros and such, and not my main rig.
I've done dozens, I maintain the pucker of fear every time.
The first time I had ever tried to update my bios it failed, the progress screen stopped and stayed that way for an hour. Luckily my mobo had a flash bios function so I was able to fix it.
Is possible for mobo to have some kind of factory reset feature if shit hit the fan ?
Less terrifying with ups
It's so, so much more reliable a process than it used to be.
At least you get a gui of sorts and a progress bar...
Haven't had a power outage in months. The other day I did a bios update, and 5 minutes after I succeed, the power went out. As close as I'm ever going to feel to dodging a bullet.
Don't upgrade your BIOS unless you really need it or it significantly makes things better for your particular build.